“Hummel delivers a lifetime of pathos and revelation in the course of one night.” —Kirkus Review
“Readers will be rapt.” —Publishers Weekly
“Goldenseal is a novel about agency and friendship whose questions reverberate far beyond its two protagonists and their particular time and place.” —Los Angeles Times
“Goldenseal provides plenty of golden moments, an elixir for these times.” —Manchester Journal
“A meditation on female friendship, loneliness, and how to move on after betrayal, Goldenseal is both melancholy and escapist.” —Zibby Owens for Good Morning America
“Sweeping yet intimate, and with characters who feel as alive as our closest friends, Goldenseal is a marvel.” —Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas
Downtown Los Angeles, 1990. Alone in her luxury hotel suite, the reclusive Lacey Crane receives a message: Edith is waiting for her in the lobby. Former best friends, Lacey and Edith haven’t spoken to each other in over four decades.
As young adults meeting at summer camp in Maine, and later making their way in the glitzy spotlight of postwar Hollywood, Edith and Lacey share a deeprooted bond that once saved them from isolation and despair, providing comfort from the public and private traumas that they had each endured and which a newly optimistic world was eager to forget. Told through a continuous, twisting conversation that unfolds over the course of a single evening, in which each woman tells her story and reveals long-hidden secrets, the narratives of Edith and Lacey burn with atmosphere, mystery, resentment, and regret.
Set against the vivid landscapes of Los Angeles and unfolding with the evanescence of a dream or a memory, Goldenseal peels away the layers of an intimate female friendship to reveal a haunting story about the search for connection and the lingering echoes of lost love.